Thursday, July 19, 2007

today i was reading 'The Art of Worship' by Greg Scheer, this really good book on leading worship and structuring the worship of a church given to me by zhenhao. (actually it was given quite a while back, earlier this year, but yeah i'm sad to say i only read the first chapter or so up to now. even now, i'm not quite halfway through yet.) anyway, just thought this was quite funny:

Just Different

a farmer was in the city on business one weekend. while he was there, he attended one of the city's churches. upon returning home, his wife asked him what it was like at the city church.
"oh, it was a lot like our country church, except that instead of hymns they sang these things called 'praise choruses'."
"praise choruses? what are those?" asked his wife.
"well, they're sort of like hymns, just different."
"different how?"
"well... sort of like this. if i said, 'martha, the cows are in the corn,' it would be a hymn.
"now if i said, 'martha, martha, martha, the cows, the white cows, the brown cows, the black cows, the cows, the cows, the cows are in the corn, in the corn, the corn. oh martha, the cows are in the corn,' that would be a praise chorus!"

that same weekend, a businessman was in the country and went to a country church. upon returning to the home, his wife asked him how the service was.
"oh, it was pretty much the same as ours, except we sang hymns instead of praise choruses."
"hymns?" his wife replied. "i think my mother told me about those! what were they like?"
"oh, sort of like a praise chorus, just different."
"different how?"
"well, if i were to say, 'mary, the cows are in the corn,' that would be a praise chorus.
"on the other hand, if i said, 'O mary, wife of my youth with whom i shall all of my days abide, incline thine ear and hearken unton my cry! for the cows of varying shades and hues - who can explain their ways? have left the fields in which they graze and have traversed yonder into the fields of golden corn that gleam in the sun,' that would be a hymn!"

haha quite interesting, isn't it? so aptly highlights the differences between our contemporary praise & worship songs and traditional hymns, and how both are good and bad in their own ways. praise & worship songs go for repetition of one central idea, driving it home to the worshippers' minds but also repeting itself with little real substance, while hymns aim to develop a broad topic, expounding on the individual details and creating a lot of substance that nevertheless complicates the lyrics and central idea considerably. so both have their pros and cons, which is why, especially in SoC, worship leaders are careful to pick a mix of both genres and then some songs in between too.

hm. interesting. =)

Posted by nayrakroarual at 8:49 AM

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